


Not A Big Deal (TM)

by shecrows



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shecrows/pseuds/shecrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or That One Time Everyone on the Enterprise Thought Jim and Bones Were Fucking, or even Damn It, Jim, I'm a Doctor, Not a Decoy. Read on <a href="http://shecrows.livejournal.com/668288.html#cutid1">livejournal</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not A Big Deal (TM)

He and Jim are close, sure. They’re best friends. It’s known. Grass is green in springtime, Klingon is another word for attitude problem, Vulcans are where jokes go to die slow, grisly, painstakingly dissected deaths, and if anyone but Jim calls him Bones there’s likely to be a surprise inoculation booster in their immediate future.

So, whatever. It’s not a big deal.

Only it sort of is, in a way. McCoy doesn’t have too many friends besides Jim. Colleagues, sure, or what Jim likes to refer to as minions. (“Because those people  _fear_ you, Bones,” Jim says once, wide-eyed and a little awed. “You didn’t even have to  _say_ anything and that dude started crying. I  _think he peed_.”) The occasional – all right,  _very_  occasional – romantic something while he was still at the Academy, or more to the point a handful of very awkward dates that never really seemed to go anywhere and ended with the woman surreptitiously changing her number, or McCoy simply never calling again. It wasn’t fair, but every woman he went out with made him panic like she was going to litigate the shirt off his back when he wasn’t looking. He’d had perfunctory relationships with his instructors, and now equally perfunctory relationships with all but one of the  _Enterprise_ ’s eleven hundred crew.

But really, it’s not for lack of trying. Jim Kirk just happens to have this genetic abnormality where if he decides he likes your face, he thinks it entitles him to stick to you like an annoying, hands-y parasite until he’s something that you’re used to.

McCoy never thought much of it. Apparently he’s one of the few who hasn't.

  
It’s Sulu, the first time. He’s a plants guy, Sulu, when he isn’t steering them casually through most of McCoy’s biggest fears, which include life-extinguishing vacuums, electromagnetic radiation, rogue solar flares, meteor storms, and all amount to a single thing: space. Apparently he was in the research lab, innocently investigating a specimen they found in the Bolarus star system, when one of the spores exploded in his face and had him stumbling into sickbay a few minutes later with an engorged penis.

Some days McCoy really doesn’t think the Federation could ever pay him enough to do this job.

Turns out, alien sex pollen isn’t as sexy as it sounds. There’s a lot of pain and a lot of fumbling and then, after a generous dose of anesthesia, a lot of, “I get that this is kind of an awkward time to say this, but I want you to know that I think you are  _so cool_ , Leonard, can I call you Leonard? I’m usually on first name terms with people at this point, wow. It’s, like, purple, is that permanent?”

McCoy grits his teeth and gets on with it, employing the basic rule of disregarding ninety percent of anything that comes out of patients' mouths when they’re doped up on painkillers.

Then Sulu says, “So I bet you’re really glad I’m not Jim right now, huh?” and McCoy almost snaps his dick off in surprise.

“Excuse me?”

“Not that you won’t be able to fix me, though, right?” It’s buoyant, overly so, and then Sulu goes awfully quiet. His eyes, McCoy notices with something akin to dread, are shining at him through a thin film of tears. “I promised my mom I’d make her a grandmother someday.”

Sulu hasn’t really been able to look him in the eye since that, but that’s not the part McCoy takes issue with. He forgets it, though, and moves on, because painkillers.

  
Then there’s the time he spends a week hunting Jim down, trying to keep him in one place long enough to vaccinate the son of a bitch in preparation for their planned month-long exploratory voyage into Delta Quadrant. It’s like the kid’s got sensors in the back of his head, and every time McCoy gets within range of him he’s suddenly deep in Very Important Conversation, Bones, Can It Wait?, clapping McCoy jovially on the shoulder and running off at the mouth to some stunned engineer about quantum theorems or nacelle capacity.

It’s just this side of enough one day. McCoy is up to his ears in backlog what with ensuring his medical bay is stocked with enough supplies to cover any and every foreseeable disaster, and he’s just thrown up his breakfast  _and_ lunch because Scotty’s been testing the warp engines all day and rattling them around the ship like grains of rice in a tin can. He marches onto the bridge, fists a hand into the back of Jim’s shirt before his eyes have had so much as a chance to widen, and says, “Jim. My office.  _Now_.”

‘Says’ is a loose term. ‘Bellows’ would be a touch more apt. In any case, McCoy is not above making a scene when necessary, on this of all days.

Jim looks a bit stunned for a moment, mouth oddly slack, but then he resumes some semblance of that irritating shit-eating grin and says, “Sure, Bones,” like he was just waiting for McCoy to ask.

McCoy doesn’t loosen his grip for a second, not even after he’s frog-marched Jim right into the turbolift, all too familiar with the inherent danger of Jim Kirk surrendering so easily. He glares at the assembled bridge crew as though daring them to protest his manhandling of their chosen leader, though they all look fairly cowed.

All except for Uhura, who looks faintly impressed, and Spock, who looks faintly green beside her.

Then Uhura winks.

The lift doors close before he can analyze the implications.

  
Scotty has a disturbing tendency to wink as well, but McCoy’s pretty sure that’s just a general thing. The man drinks like he wants to make a religion out of it, more than McCoy does and without the darker edge of self-destruction, casually reverent as he croons delicately over a bottle of scotch one moment, rattles off theories of quantum mechanics the next. Jim’s the only one who seems to keep up, but then McCoy’s seen him do astrophysics calculations in his head while perusing the porn collection on his data padd.

He sees how they might be kindred souls.

McCoy happens on a two man booze-fueled poker game once when they’re waiting out orders off Casperia Prime. The chips are spread all over the table, making it impossible to tell who’s winning, and half the cards have somehow ended up spilling among long coils of copper wires on the floor. Jim’s wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, cheeks red and eyes bright, and McCoy watches them with the side of his hip propped against the doorway, a look on his face that’s stupidly fond.

“And so the nuclear physicist says to the waiter,” pants the flushed Scotsman, gesturing expansively with the cards in his hand, his mind no longer on the game. Jim doubles over the table with renewed laughter. McCoy feels his own lips twitch. “He says no, thank you kindly, I’ll just have the fission chips!”

Keenser appears from under a metal crate, glaring at the pair of them and boxing his head with both arms. He and McCoy share a long look. McCoy shrugs.

“Doctor!” exclaims Scott, and Jim looks over and wipes at his eyes again, chest heaving as the peals of laughter fade away into giddy little hiccups. “Fancy a game?”

“Thanks, no,” McCoy says, not unkindly. “I actually thought I might borrow our captain for a moment, given he isn’t too busy captaining.” He infuses the last word with as much rueful sarcasm as he can muster, which, considering that for him it almost doubles as a second language, is nothing to scoff at.

Scott interprets it entirely the wrong way, grinning manically as his gaze falls blearily on one, then the other. He waves his half empty bottle around like a punctuation mark made manifest, though McCoy notices he never spills a drop. “Aye, ‘course! Cannae get in the way of young love, an’ all. Well,” he adds, slanting a look at McCoy. “Youngish.”

Jim’s laughter renews itself, full-bodied and brilliant, while McCoy stares.

Scotty winks, or maybe his eye just twitches, it’s hard to tell. The words hang in the air all wrong, and McCoy wants to comment, but Jim just keeps laughing his fool head off, stumbling to his feet and slinging an arm over McCoy’s shoulders.

“Scotty, my man,” he says, gesturing to the empty bottles, chips, and playing cards. It looks like a small ball casino threw up on the table and died. “We’ll call it a draw?”

“Go on, then,” the man says magnanimously. His eye twitches again. McCoy thinks about ordering him to sickbay just to check for head trauma. “Don’t let me keep ye two lovebirds.”

Jim laughs again, more sober up close. He never really gets drunk on the ship, not even when he’s technically off duty, saves it instead for shore leave when McCoy gets saddled with the unparalleled privilege (five years running, which is to say their entire acquaintance) of being the one to haul his majesty’s ass back to something resembling a bed.

McCoy pitches his voice low. “Did he just – ”

“Nope,” Jim says, swaying a little, decidedly into him and not away, the hard consonant popping off of his lips. He smiles, slow and easy. “Come on, Bones. I’m all yours.”

  
Jim gets respect from his crew, in part because he gives it, and in part because he’s done everything in his power to earn it. They’ve learned to trust him, and he trusts them right back in a way that makes something twinge, not entirely unpleasantly, in McCoy’s gut. It’s even, balanced, with the exception of Chekov, whose expression when Jim’s back is turned is one of such transparent adoration it kind of borders on hero worship.

He’s not sure if Jim notices, and probably it wouldn’t matter if he did. The kid’s nineteen now but he’s still practically a fetus, albeit a fetus with a genius IQ, all baby skin and soft blue eyes and a face that could probably send McCoy’s nine year old daughter into a fit of girlish squealing quicker than any box of kittens.

He lights up under Jim’s attention, talking rapidly about things McCoy couldn’t be paid to understand, and Jim responds with equal enthusiasm, always kind but carefully removed. McCoy feels old just looking at them, honestly, not just because it’s the one time Jim isn’t automatically shafted into the role of “kid.” McCoy can see the smile lines around Jim’s eyes more clearly, the absence of scrapes and bruises on his knuckles when he clasps an encouraging hand on Chekov’s shoulder, the touch brief, warm but reserved. His chest, oddly, aches at it.

It’s when Chekov looks up and catches him staring that the kid starts tripping over his sentences, and for a fleeting moment the expression on his face is one of sheer panic. McCoy frowns, which just compels Chekov to put an abrupt foot or two of added distance between himself and the captain before darting a sheepish, terrified look at McCoy and turning back to his console.

“I think the kid’s scared of me,” he says to Jim later over a steaming plate of replicated lunch.

“Who?” Jim asks around a mouthful. “Bones, you scare a lot of people.”

“Chekov, and no, I don’t.”

Jim looks thoughtful. “That’s not on purpose?”

“What’s not?”

“Scaring the shit out of people.”

“I don’t – why would I purposely do that? They’re my  _patients_ , Jim.”

“Yeah, but,” Jim says, dragging out the vowel in the second word and waving his fork in a slow circle, “I don’t know, I mean, I think it works. People so much as sneeze around here and they come straight to you for a consult, because they know if it turns out to be some kind of alien space disease that turns them inside out through their assho – ”

“Eating, Jim. I’m eating.”

“ – it’d only be  _half_ as bad as dealing with how pissed off you’d be that they didn’t come to you sooner.”

McCoy scowls. “It’s not on purpose.”

“Whatever, man.” Jim grins widely. “Keep it up.”

McCoy doesn’t mention that it's never worked on him.

  
Spock is the worst, because Spock doesn’t do nuance.

He misinterprets McCoy’s question in the utmost way possible, and McCoy can only stare at him in blank horror as he says, in that smooth, inflectionless timbre, “It is indeed likely that young Ensign Chekov harbors something of an infatuation with our captain, but I sincerely doubt that he will act upon it as he is very much aware of the fact that you are, to use one of Jim’s colorful earth colloquialisms, striking that.”

McCoy feels a distinct pounding in his temple, and Spock’s serene expression of calm benevolence only serves to send his blood pressure skyrocketing practically through the roof.

“We’re – I’m  _not_ ,” he manages to choke out.

Something like surprise actually registers on Spock’s face. If McCoy were in a frame of mind to appreciate it, he might take pleasure in the rare lapse.

“Fascinating.”

The  _hell_  it  _is_ .

  
Of course Jim notices. His radar for innuendo is accurate to, like, a hundredth of a degree. The thing is, he doesn’t mind. It maybe even kind of works for them. Take into account A: the preconceived notion that he and Bones are, whatever, an item, B: the fact that Bones is personally responsible for the health of everyone onboard and could easily slip, say, a temporary strain of some alien STI into someone’s monthly inoculation, and C: the crew’s glorious ignorance to the fact that Bones is all fucking bark covering layers of total marshmallow.

It simplifies things, keeps the relationships with his crew firmly platonic and professional. Jim’s aware of his reputation for harlotry at the Academy as was, having spent many a fruitful hour cultivating it personally, but it wouldn’t have done him any favors as captain.

It’s nothing that takes special effort to maintain. When he slips into Bones’s quarters after hours to share a drink and maybe pass out on the side of his bed with a data padd dangling from his hand, it isn’t with any hidden agenda. He’d be here anyway, waking up on a bed too small for two, Bones’s back pressing warmly against his spine.

So, whatever. It’s not a big deal.

So maybe he helps it along a little sometimes. 

It’s just that when the opportunity presents itself so beautifully, it isn’t in him to resist.

He’s on the bridge when Bones puts a hand on his arm, looking like he might be angry, and it might be at Jim, but his case isn’t as developed as he’d like so he’s giving him the chance to either incriminate or absolve himself. Well, here’s nothing.

“Jim,” he says, voice low and pointed and well out of earshot of anyone else, eyebrow twitching in the way Jim privately finds adorable. “Why the hell does everyone on this ship think we’re having sex?”

“Whoa, Bones! Stop undressing me with your eyes!”

The bridge goes quiet, Bones draws a murderous breath, and the vein in his neck looks like it’s going to explode.

It’s beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> sequel: [Wherefore Art Thou Cantankerous Bastard](http://archiveofourown.org/works/315610)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Not a Big Deal (TM) and Wherefore Art Thou Cantankerous Bastard by Shecrows](https://archiveofourown.org/works/344243) by [fire_juggler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_juggler/pseuds/fire_juggler)




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